When music streaming company Spotify moved to San Francisco’s Mid-Market in 2013, its arrival was hailed as another revitalization of the troubled neighborhood by city officials. The Swedish tech company leased three floors of office space in a historic 1922 building at 988 Market St. that includes the Warfield Theatre concert venue. It was a “perfect fit” for the music-focused company, Spotify said at the time. But in the past month, the company moved out before its lease ended — and will no longer be eligible for the controversial Mid-Market payroll tax break. The 2011 program gave nine companies including Spotify, Twitter and Zendesk a tax break in exchange for opening offices in the neighborhood and providing community benefits like donations to nonprofits. Spotify’s departure underscores continued challenges in Mid-Market, where tech investment has brought thousands of high-paying jobs but hasn’t changed a challenging street milieu of poverty, homelessness and open-air drug dealing. Spotify’s new office is the Merchants Exchange Building in the north Financial District, which includes the swanky Julia Morgan Ballroom. The company moved in about a month ago, said a Spotify security guard who gave his first name as Charles. The change was motivated in part because some Spotify workers felt unsafe in Mid-Market, said two former Spotify workers, who requested anonymity to avoid repercussions from former or current employers. The Mid-Market and Tenderloin neighborhoods have some of the highest violent crime rates and poverty rates in the city, according to government data. Last year, a female… [Read full story]